Amilcar Arnaldo Tirado, MD, MBA

A year after being hospitalized with COVID, a physician considers the pandemic’s larger meaning for American medicine—and for American society.

The COVID-19 outbreak will eventually end, but public health experts expect this will not be the last pandemic. Will we have learned the right lessons so we can more successfully weather the next one?

Dr Tirado offers words of wisdom and encouragement on the pandemic.

His symptoms worsened throughout most of his hospitalization, leaving him to ponder a grim reality: “This is it. This is how your story ends.”